For decades, these Canadians thought they were orphans

Thursday, September 28, 2023 - By John McHutchion

Here’s what you need to know to get the day started:

For decades, these Canadians thought they were orphans — but it was a lie

Kelly Foston, left, and Kim McKay were both adopted out of South Korea in the 1970s. Their official papers said they were orphans, but that is not actually the case. (Submitted by Kelly Foston, submitted by Kim McKay)

Kelly Foston always thought she was an orphan.

That’s because her adoption paperwork, riddled with “no record” and “unknown” and signed by Korean authorities, declared her to be one.

As she understood it, she was just shy of four when she left South Korea in 1978, and was adopted by a couple in White Rock, B.C., a coastal community minutes away from the U.S. border. She grew up in a quaint, suburban neighbourhood with two older brothers and partook in traditional North American activities — camping and going to Disneyland, “eating potatoes and pasta.”

“I’m a Western girl. I had a happy adoption, I had a good family,” said Foston, now 48, who works as a recreational therapist in Vancouver.

Foston’s birth name was Yoon Soo Joon, according to Social Welfare Society (SWS), the Korean adoption agency that facilitated most adoptions to Canada. (The agency is now called KWS.) The paperwork she arrived with says she was “found abandoned” in front of a Seoul orphanage on March 7, 1978, with only a slip of paper denoting her birthdate: Dec. 23. 1974.

But a few months ago, Foston learned her adoption story may be a lie.

After one of her adoptee friends found his biological family earlier this year, Foston pushed KWS for additional records on her case. The agency said none exist. But then in May, KWS sent Foston a copy of a weathered document that contradicted many of the unknowns in her original papers.

It was an application form filled out on March 7, 1978 — the day she was allegedly “found abandoned.” It suggests someone had deliberately put her up for adoption.

CBC News spoke to more than 20 adoptees in Canada and around the world who question the accuracy of their adoption paperwork from South Korea. Like Foston’s, many of the records state the children were found abandoned and omit key details of family history.

While they were all given certificates designating them legal orphans, some are learning they may in fact have been stolen from their biological parents. Others discovered their parents were still alive and searching for them.

More on this issue

Read the full story here.

Watch: Korean ‘orphans’ uncover the truth about their adoption history

He was stolen from his Chilean mother at birth — then found her 42 years later

Hot pursuit

(Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty Images)

Jorge Martin of Spain, left, chases Johann Zarco of France during a minibike race today as part of the pre-events for Sunday's MotoGP Japanese Grand Prix in Motegi, Japan.

In brief

Across Canada, COVID-19 rapid tests are less accessible even as cases are on the rise, due to policy changes and inconsistent public health communication about testing, experts say. "What we've observed is that the access to [rapid] tests has certainly declined in the last little while," said Dr. Fahad Razak, internal medicine doctor at St. Michael's Hospital and Canada Research Chair in health-care data and analytics at the University of Toronto. There is no shortage of COVID-19 rapid tests in Canadian warehouses, according to Health Canada data which shows there were 187 million undistributed rapid tests as of July 14. With a spike in cases and new vaccine campaign rollouts across the country, doctors say there is a need to make testing and mask wearing more commonplace to mitigate the risks of COVID-19 spread. Read the full story here.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has called the decision to invite an elderly Ukrainian Second World War veteran who fought for Nazi Germany an "egregious error" that "deeply embarrassed Parliament and Canada." On Wednesday, he offered what he called "unreserved apologies" on Canada's behalf for the hurt it caused. Many experts say they're skeptical about the prospect of Canada's political leaders and institutions learning something from the now-infamous episode that capped President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's trip to Canada. Many historians will tell you that what we've witnessed over the last several days is history coming back to bite Canada — specifically over its refusal down the decades to acknowledge or own up to the decisions that allowed Yaroslav Hunka, who served with the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), to immigrate to Canada in the 1950s. Read the full story here.

Demand for electricity across Canada is forecast to double in the next 25 years, and all the signs from Ontario Premier Doug Ford's government indicate that nuclear energy will supply the biggest portion of the province's additional power needs. Key factors driving that demand include the auto sector's looming transition to electric vehicles and the push for industries to reduce their carbon emissions. That creates the potential for Ontario to embark on what would be Canada's biggest-ever expansion of nuclear power, a multi-decade construction project with costs that could ultimately run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. There's no way Ontario can ramp up electricity production sufficiently without expanding nuclear production, says Energy Minister Todd Smith. The government's "overwhelming focus" on nuclear-powered electricity would take Ontario down "an extraordinarily high-cost and high-risk pathway," says Mark Winfield, a professor and co-chair of the Sustainable Energy Initiative at York University. Read the full story here.

When the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) unveiled its student memorial register in 2019 of children who died in residential schools, those behind it acknowledged it was far from complete. Among the 2,800 names on the register at the time, at least one raised eyebrows. One entry was not even truly a name: "Indian girl 237." After combing through hundreds of annual reports, correspondence and death certificates from residential schools and records supplied by White Bear First Nation in Saskatchewan, we now know her name was Letitia John. "We come from a place that has much history and to be able to move forward we need to address some of that," said former White Bear First Nation chief Annette Lonechild. "It's only fitting that we have this privilege because of others' research, to bring closure for someone." Read the full story here.

Now here's some good news to start your Thursday: The Benson family were cruising about 40 kilometres off the island of Grand Manan, N.B., when they spotted a large number of dolphins. After switching off the boat to watch, the family got a surprise — and close — encounter with New Brunswick's favourite orca whale, Old Thom. A once in a million trip? No, this was the third time this year Old Thom has visited the Bensons in the Bay of Fundy. Watch the video here.

FIRST PERSON

I saw my father reflected in the faces protesting against LGBTQ rights and sex ed

Alexis Zhou hasn't seen her family in China for years. But when she showed up to speak out against the "1 million March 4 children" protest in Montreal, it felt like she was shouting at her own parents on the other side of the police line. Read her column here.

Your weekly guide to what you need to know about federal politics and the minority Liberal government. Get the latest news and sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every Sunday morning. Click here to subscribe to the newsletter.

Sexual misconduct crisis rages on in Canada’s military

The latest from Canada’s military sexual misconduct crisis. Why hasn’t the government stripped the military of jurisdiction over sexual offences?
Listen to today's episode

Today in history: September 28

1920: Seven members of the Chicago White Sox and one former member are indicted by a grand jury on charges of conspiring with gamblers to fix the outcome of the 1919 World Series. The players were acquitted at their trial but were banned from organized baseball for the rest of their lives.

1939: Warsaw surrenders after weeks of resistance to invading forces from Nazi Germany.

1972: Paul Henderson scores the most famous goal in Canadian hockey history with 34 seconds remaining in the final game of the Canada-Soviet Summit Series in Moscow.

1998: Canadian Blood Services officially takes over responsibility for the country’s blood system from the Canadian Red Cross. The same work is performed in Quebec by Héma-Québec.

(With files from CBC News, The Canadian Press, The Associated Press and Reuters)